Floods, fire and faith

From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

Floods, fire and faith 16 January 2011 The Revd Dr Raymond Pelly

• Psalm 40:1-11
• Isaiah 49:1-7
• I Corinthians1:1-9
• John 1:29-42

http://wellingtoncathedral.org.nz/index.php/Sermons

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you …. when you walk through fire you shall not be burned. Isaiah 43:2

We surely don’t need reminding that we live in a time of crises. Christchurch is still experiencing aftershocks. Parts of Brisbane and a chunk of Queensland the size of France and Germany are under water. Two years ago fire devastated parts of the State of Victoria. If that wasn’t enough, floods in the densely populated SE of Brazil have caused the deaths of over 400 people. Earthquakes are unpredictable; but extreme weather events – like droughts and floods – are made more frequent, by climate change – meaning gradual warming of oceans and landmass and higher moisture content in the atmosphere.

All this is obvious. What isn’t so clear is what it means to be a person of faith given all of that. It’s this that I want to address this morning.

First of all, let’s look (briefly) at the faith we have as Christians as we see it in today’s readings.

• Psalm 40 is a prayer for help and a thanksgiving for deliverance;
• Isaiah 49 is a prophecy about the mission and calling of the servant of God;
• I Corinthians speaks of the faithfulness of God and the strength this gives to go through to the end;
• The Gospel of John tells of the increasing (or deepening) of faith in Christ.

Come back, then, to the person of faith.

1.At its most basic (in a time of crisis) there are hands-on and urgent practicalities to be dealt with: the huge and daunting task of the clean-up; the re-instatement of sewerage systems, clean drinkable water and electricity supply; the re-housing of people whose homes have been destroyed or ruined; providing immediate medical care for those who need it; controlling looters … The list is endless.

Here I see people of faith, Christians in particular, getting involved (as individuals or as communities) in addressing any problems where they can make a difference: offering hospitality to homeless people; or, if they themselves are among those affected, doing whatever they can to help others similarly afflicted. If all else fails, they can still be praying hopeful people at a time when the vital sparks of faith, hope and love may be in short supply.

2.Down the track another set of issues looms up: how to re-activate a functioning society, temporarily at a standstill. Here we’re talking about infrastructure and the economy: roads, rail-links, airports; and then businesses, banks, insurance companies, government, hospitals, schools, the rule of law … all that go to make up a modern society. The problems now are long-term and complex.

The person of faith in this scenario is the one who puts his or her professional expertise (in whatever institution they may be active) at the service of the urgent tasks at hand and way beyond the call of duty. Here we (as people of faith) might uphold the image of the ‘good and faithful servant’ with the strength of character to see things to the end; who is not out to profit from the chaos or for their own ends, but who is genuinely concerned to make services – financial, medical, educational, legal, to do with transport or whatever – available to as many people and as quickly as possible. And this because peoples’ lives and livelihoods are at stake. In this a strong sense of social compassion and justice are key. Isaiah’s Servant, we should remind ourselves, is called ‘to restore the survivors’ and ‘bring light to the nations’.

3.Next in line – or better, throughout – there is the whole human thing: people who are shocked, traumatized, bewildered, in grief. OK, we might say, ship in teams of counselors. They’ll deal with the problem. But it goes deeper than that, is more long-term. You may be talking about yourself, your neighbour, a family member, people you know at work … The wounds are deep, their healing needing time.

So you person of faith, are you one of the carers? Or if you need to be cared for, are you proactive in seeking the help you need? Does a crisis reveal that the number of people requiring care exceeds the capacity of the community to offer care? In a society of individualism and selfish hedonism, the well-springs of care and compassion must be kept open. What is faith if it is not about that?

4.Crises are always illuminating, they force us to look into the depths. When the crisis comes, ‘shall we find faith on the earth?’When we look into our own hearts (or into the core values of our society), what do we find? Just a void? Or the flotsam and jetsam of a culture which, with much else, has just been swept away or severely shaken? These can be very searching questions – if we can face up to them.

Here we can learn from our Gospel. Read in the context of John’s whole theology, it says that the more deeply God becomes involved in human life and its realities – ‘the Word was made flesh’ – the more the true nature of God is revealed. This however is no theoretical concept: it became manifest in the course of a very special life, the life, suffering and rising to life of Jesus. Very simple, but resonating in all directions.

The message for any of us in crisis is simple and profound: the more and the more deeply you get involved, the more and the more deeply will you find God. And that means at all the points we have just mentioned: dealing with immediate practicalities; restoring a functioning society; attending to human need; being courageous enough to look into the faith or the corruption in ourselves or our society. What is the vision, the faith, the inspiration that we have which alone in the end will give us and our communities a real and viable future?

5.Lastly, the issue of leadership. What does the crisis reveal about the people we choose to lead us? How fares it with George Bush and New Orleans; John Key and Christchurch and Pike River; Barack Obama and the Tucson shootings; and now Julia Gillard and Queensland? Are politicians merely politicians? Or do they have a depth of humanity and wealth of faith that enables them to be true leaders when real leadership is called for? In this way crises again go to the root of who we are.

On this, just two brief comments. The first is about motivation. What drives people to seek power in political office? For the person of faith it will be something like this: a passionate concern for the human community, and, hand in hand with that, a willingness to take responsibility for the problems of their society (especially when in crisis), problems that many people are tempted to ignore or throw into the ‘too hard’ basket. In this responsiveness and responsibility go hand in hand; will form the kind of leaders who attract to themselves people who are similarly minded, similarly motivated. Isn’t this the kind of leadership we need?

Secondly, courage is the mark of the true leader; courage, that is, to go to the root of problems and look for real solutions. Such problems show themselves in all the areas we have mentioned. But perhaps underlying them all is the question of what we’re doing to our planet and what a sustainable world of the future (for our children and grandchildren) might look like. If the recent UN Climate Change Conferences in Copenhagen and Cancun are anything to go by, there is a lot of pussy-footing around amongst world leadership and political elites. But if there is anything we can learn from what is happening in Australia and worldwide, it’s really very simple: the time is short.